


Whatever Happened to the Ravenclaws of the Class of 83 (Part One)

by Damien_Le_Cercle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:21:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28976583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damien_Le_Cercle/pseuds/Damien_Le_Cercle
Summary: Four friends of different backgrounds





	Whatever Happened to the Ravenclaws of the Class of 83 (Part One)

Whatever happened to the Ravenclaws of the Class of ’83?

The following slightly fictionalised account comes from interviews with Charlotte Spencer-Moon (Hogwarts School, Class of 1983, House of Ravenclaw) and her classmates. Before she disappeared from public view, Spencer-Moon consented to interviews with The Edinburgh Magickal Review. The reporting of The Review relied upon Spencer-Moon’s candid recollections, including her accounts of her surreptitious forays into the Pensieve of her grandfather, Leonard Spencer-Moon, the well-regarded Minister for Magic from 1939 to 1948. The Review sought verification or confirmation from other persons, including Phoebe Avery-Cartin, Bradley Goldstein, and Dominic Loughran (all Hogwarts, 1983, Ravenclaw), Malachi de Vaux (expelled from Hogwarts; Muggle name Trynnian Brougham, Seventh Baron Brougham and Vaux), Eliot Abbot (Hogwarts, 1982, Ravenclaw), Veronique Smethley (Hogwarts, 1978, Ravenclaw), Evelyn Bones (Hogwarts, 1984, Hufflepuff), and Culverin Carrow (sorted into Slytherin 1976, did not matriculate Hogwarts). Not all of these sources were available for comment, and any errors in the following story are the fault of The Edinburgh Magickal Review.   
This slightly fictionalised account is primarily the work of Julien Le Cercle, Associate Editor, The Edinburgh Magickal Review. 

1 September 1976   
10:50 a.m.   
King’s Cross Station: 

Phoebe Avery-Cartin: Mother, don’t fuss. 

Phoebe’s mother (straightening & smoothing the collar of Phoebe’s blouse): Shush, dear, you want to look sharp on your first day, don’t you? 

Phoebe isn’t thinking of her peers, bustling all round her. She thinks she’s just caught a glimpse of Boudica, armoured and holding a spear, behind a trolley laden with trunks and caged owls. Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters? Nine-and-Three-Quarters, really? She could be standing directly atop the battlefield, could be astride Boudica’s last stand, her grave, her bones. The soles of her feet tingle. 

Dorcas Meadowes (to Phoebe’s mother): Come, dear, let’s leave her be for a moment.

Bradley Goldstein’s father: Cheers, then. Don’t look like that, you’ll be fine.   
Bradley: Look like what? I don’t look like anything.  
Father: Don’t say that that. You look like everything. You look like the smartest boy on the platform. You look like the apple of your mother’s eye.  
Bradley: Malus domestica. Laxton’s Superb. Wyken Pippen. Matris oculus. Thanks, da.   
Father: That’s the spirit. Good man.

Lilian Loughran and her orphaned nephew, Dominic Loughran, barely speak. She claps him on the shoulder and he punches back. Neither cracks a smile, but her pride is in her eyes, his determination in his. Their Legilimency is strong. Silently, she says to him, King of Cups. He counters and thinks back at her, Four of Swords. 

Charlotte Spencer-Moon stands alone, arms & legs akimbo. The family decided it would be best to have a celebratory dinner the night before, an early rising, a light breakfast, and then for her to arrive on her own, to avoid any appearance that she was preferred or privileged. Here or there, she makes eye contact and nods in greeting to complete strangers. Outwardly cool as autumn, she is a smouldering volcano. 

1 September 1976   
Late afternoon 

The train flies. Of course, it does not literally fly, it chugs along tracks. Magical tracks. Nevertheless, the sensations of acceleration and aviation are inescapable. Beyond the compartment’s window, the countryside has become a wild, dark tangle that hurls past them. Stare too long out that window, and the Chocolate Frogs in your stomach start hopping again, as if they might come back up and out your throat.   
Four young witches and wizards are cramped together, knees touching, facing each other, quiet, avoiding eye contact.   
Gamely, Phoebe Avery-Cartin makes another stab at conversation.   
“My whole family have been Ravenclaws for generations. But my mother has always told me I’m more of a Hufflepuff. A helper. I couldn’t imagine being a Gryffindor or a Slytherin. What do you think your houses should be?”   
The other three greet her with a ringing, stubborn silence. At last, the boy on her right replies, “It’s a hat. My father told me.”   
This comment loosens the girl diagonally across from Phoebe. “Yes, it is a hat. There’s nothing to it. A professor dumps it on your head, and it reads your mind, and it decides your fate for the rest of your life. Nothing to it!” Her laugh could be ironic, or it could be a little hysterical. She composes herself and adds, “Hullo, I’m Charlotte.”  
“Hullo, Charlotte, I’m Bradley.”   
“Bradley, Charlotte, I’m Phoebe.”   
They shake hands.   
Only the dark, heavy-lidded boy across from Phoebe has not opened up. He is gazing out the window at the growingly savage wilderness flying past them. His breath is fogging the window. At last, he turns his head away and looks them all dead in the eye, each in turn.   
“My mum was a Slytherin. She’s dead. Dragon Pox. Don’t worry, it was Type Two. Not contagious. I don’t have it. You won’t catch it from me.”   
A shocked pause ensues.   
Phoebe plunges ahead. She puts out her hand.  
“I’m Phoebe Avery-Cartin, and I’m pleased to meet you. And you are?”   
“Dominic Loughran. And, to answer your question, I already know. I’m to be sorted into Ravenclaw.” He consents to shake her hand. 

1 September 1976   
Evening   
The Sorting Hat’s Song:   
First-Years, stand at rapt attention for Sorting!   
Tonight, I set your tenure  
Determine you more surely than a port-key  
My rule of your life is pure,   
True, un-alloyed by any self-seeking   
Now, hear of our Houses Four   
Badger’s sweat, Eagle’s mind, Lion’s roar, Snake’s sting  
Slytherin and Gryffindor   
Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, your House during  
Your years here, so I implore   
First-Years, clear your minds, hear the Filch Cat purring   
So I may place you therefore  
In the Family House best for your learning  
In your years, each day, each hour   
Hush, so Hat may hear! Peace upon your heartstring!   
Into me, your heart must pour!  
Let us educate and learn in harmony!   
In each is much to adore!

Early in the alphabet, McGonagall calls out, Carrow, Culverin, and Dominic Loughran snorts. He knows all about the Carrows. Fucking wankers. The hat barely touches Carrow’s head and shouts, SLYTHERIN! A cheer goes up from the Slytherins. The kid gazes unblinkingly at the table, grey eyes as blank as a snake’s, hands the hat to McGonagall without looking at her, and ambles off with the languid, sloping gait of an odds-on favourite bareknuckle boxer heading toward the ring. He doesn’t crack a smile. 

In contrast to the earnest song, the Hat has something to say to each of the four who will become best mates: Something private and a little too honest for comfort. Over the next periods of time, they reveal to each other a little bit of how the shite went down. 

The sorting goes somewhat like this:  
McGonagall: Avery-Cartin, Phoebe!   
Phoebe sits on the stool, the Hat is dumped on her head.   
Hat: It’s obviously Ravenclaw, little girl, but let me tease you for a bit, only because I’m mean. I’m supposed to be saying something in verse, in meter, but I’m really only being mean. Do you know you have a pimple coming out on your forehead just now? The longer this hat is on your head, the more you perspire…. Oh, anyway, you’ve got some ambition, which could put you in the other house, also, you’re basically kind to others, which could put you in the other-other house, not so much courage, though, sorry, warned you I was being mean…. BETTER BE RAVENCLAW!

McGonagall: Goldstein, Bradley!   
Bradley sits on the stool, the Hat is dumped on his head.   
Hat: Well, who’s a little smarty-pants? Who knows the herbs and all the plants? Who’ll get the O.W.L.s and all the N.E.W.T.s? Smarty-pants makes me puke! RAVENCLAW! 

McGonagall: Loughran, Dominic!   
Dominic sits on the stool, the Hat is dumped on his head.   
Hat: I know you, you urchin. I put your mother in Slytherin. Your uncle who slapped you was called Fin. Raised by Aunt Lilian. The Grey Lady will give you a rare grin. RAVENCLAW!

McGonagall: Spencer-Moon, Charlotte!   
Charlotte sits on the stool, the Hat is dumped on her head.   
Hat: Well, well, look at me! From an important family! I’ve got ambition for all to see, but I also want to be seen as brainy! BETTER BE RAVENCLAW! 

After Headmaster Dumbledore’s speech:   
Loughran says: The Greatest Wizard of All Time gives a First Day of School Speech like a Muggle bus conductor. This stop, start-of-term notices, next stop, pun and gibberish, destination, bed.   
(This is how “The Pun & Gibberish” becomes the imaginary pub of the four friends.) 

Later, Ravenclaw Common Room:   
Veronique Smethley (Sixth-Year) welcomes the new kids sincerely but reservedly; that’s just how she is. 

April Grante (Fourth-Year) welcomes the new kids warmly and learns each one’s name immediately. Charlotte is the granddaughter of a former Minister for Magic and has a politician’s smile. Phoebe has appraising eyes that she uses to look you up and down. Bradley looks like he’s anticipating getting hit with a Stunning Spell any second. Dominic’s guarded look makes you think he’s playing it cool till it’s time to join his accomplices and rob Gringotts. 

Eliot Abbot welcomes the new kids by talking them through the basics of what their classes will be like. 

A Fifth-Year, a Prefect, no less (to Dominic): I heard your mum was in Slytherin.   
Loughran: That’s right. Very ambitious, she was. Right good thing for me, too.   
Prefect: Oh yeah, why’s that?   
Loughran: You also must have heard she died. If she hadn’t been such a good galleon-spinner, I’d have been left destitute.   
This has the desired effect of shutting the boy up. 

Avery-Cartin: Is it possible you went to live with a relative, with relatives?   
Loughran: Of course I did. Family is everything. Why?   
Avery-Cartin: I believe my family may know your aunt, Lady Lilian.   
Loughran: What about it?   
Avery-Cartin: Nothing, only they admire her talents and have had her over for cocktail hour. 

This does not have the effect she intends, which is to have the boy they were just sorted with pulled out of exclusion into the circle of inclusion. Lady Lilian Loughran is that seer with digs at the dark end of Knockturn Alley. Obviously, the Avery-Cartins have employed her. So, here is an orphan raised by a tradeswoman who does something dodgy. 

September 1976:   
First week of term, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry:   
Bradley, Charlotte, & Phoebe have got lost on the way to Transfiguration, which is theoretically impossible, as they’ve been there once before and it’s on the first floor. A Gryffindor prefect named Romulus or Remus or some such thing kindly gives them directions.   
Phoebe: He seems nice.   
Bradley: Agreed. Why do people say things about Gryffindor?   
Charlotte: Hmph. Like we need reminding the staircases change!   
They get to class, late. Prof. McGonagall doesn’t stop her lecture or acknowledge them. They find free seats at the back, next to that kid Dominic, who is taking notes in tiny, inscrutable script. He doesn’t look about, but slides his copy of Emeric Switch over and taps the passage McGonagall is lecturing from. Bradley sees that the passage Dominic is tapping is on the verso page. On the recto page is a foreign playing card. Phoebe sees the card too and recognizes it as the Neun Eicheln. Lilian Loughran drew it for Phoebe’s mother one time. Charlotte notices Prof. McGonagall giving them the stink eye. After class, McGonagall takes six points from Ravenclaw, two a piece, for tardiness. 

September 1976:   
Ravenclaw table, breakfast:   
Older boy, overflowing with personality, hair, and teeth: Ah! First Years! Excellent! Welcome to Hogwarts! Welcome to Ravenclaw! Lockhart! Gilderoy Lockhart! I trust you’re settling in! Need anything! Anything at all! You’ve only to ask! 

September 1976:   
First Year Charms Class: Charlotte Spencer-Moon: Wingardium Leviosa! (Feather levitates slightly.)   
Phoebe Avery-Cartin: Wingardium Leviosa! (Similar or better result.)   
Bradley Goldstein: Wingardium Leviosa!   
Dominic Loughran: Wingardium Leviosa! (Best result.)   
Professor Flitwick (aloud): Oh, look at Ravenclaw table, everyone! Excellent! One point to Ravenclaw House!   
Flitwick (to himself): They’re doing the best, they haven’t set fire to anything, unlike the Gryffindor table, but one doesn’t need to favour one’s own House when awarding points in class. 

October 1976:   
First Year History of Magic Class, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry:   
Dominic Loughran: Excuse me, Professor?   
Prof. Binns: Yes, Lafferty?   
Dominic: Loughran, sir. I was only wondering, sir, whether, in the history of Hogwarts, there had ever been any teachers who were, who were — (trying to ignore Phoebe Avery-Cartin’s elbow in his ribs).   
Binns: Speak up, Lawrence!   
Dominic: Sir. Wondering whether there had been any teachers who were dead.   
Binns: They’re all dead, Lawrence! The school’s nearly a thousand years old! The faculty are more dead than alive! (Resumes lecturing from notes.)   
Charlotte Spencer-Moon: (Shoots Dominic a filthy look.)   
Bradley Goldstein: (Knuckles in mouth, staring a desk.) 

Later, Ravenclaw Common Room:   
The foursome are sitting in a circle on the rug in the corner furthest from the fire, books & scrolls & ink wells scattered amongst them.   
Abrasive Fifth-Year Boy, in comfy chair near fire: Oi! Loughran! Word is, you slagged off Professor Binns! Just like a Slytherin would do.   
(Dominic ignores him.)   
Phoebe, defiant: Word travels fast.  
Boy: I’m a school Prefect. It’s my business.   
Charlotte (sotto voce): You could show a bit more respect, Dominic. He taught my grandparents.   
Bradley: Was he alive then?   
Everyone except Charlotte laughs. 

25 December 1976, dawn  
Unplottable Magical property, near Grove End Road and Waverly Place, Saint John’s Wood, London: 

Phoebe Avery-Cartin awakes and pokes her head out of the Hippogriff-down comforter, then, reluctantly, puts her bare feet down on the frigid hardwood floor. She crosses the room at speed, as quietly as a mouse in a Muggle poem about Christmas, and takes from the wardrobe a thing that can only be a Muggle “terry-cloth bathrobe,” a thing of which she has heard; putting it on, she also puts her feet into what can only be Muggle “fuzzy slippers.” 

Back in the bed she has just vacated, Charlotte stirs and mumbles, “Wuzz goin on?”   
“Shush. It’s Christmas morning. Nobody’s awake yet.”   
Barely speaking aloud, communicating by gesture and silent agreement, they sneak down the staircase. At the entrance to the kitchen, they see the house elves quietly bustling to get breakfast ready. It is fit to be a feast. One bows, the rest pretend not to notice them. They creep round the corner and down the parquet-floored corridor. Phoebe tries door knobs, peeks inside rooms; Charlotte shivers and yawns. Then Charlotte says,   
“That’s my grandfather’s study. I’m not supposed to go in there.”   
“But you’ve been,” Phoebe defies her. Phoebe pushes the door all the way and strides boldly in.   
The curtains over the window are sheer and give onto the small, walled garden behind the house. Dawn’s light is oblique, pale, warmthless. The room’s furnishings and sensibility remind Phoebe of etchings she has seen in Muggle books of the Muggle British Raj in India.   
“What’s that?”   
“It’s my grandfather’s Pensieve. I’ve never been.” Charlotte meets Phoebe’s gaze and does not blink. They do not speak. Together, they walk to the stone basin in its alcove. Together, they plunge their faces in. 

Monday 16 September 1940   
Full hearing of the Wizengamot: 

Uproar. Witches and wizards on their feet, shouting, pointing fingers, fists in the air. Minister for Magic Leonard Spencer-Moon also on his feet, gavelling for order.   
The Minister for Magic is completely unlike the gentle, doting grand papa Charlotte has known since she was a swaddled babe. His volume is deafening, his tone stentorian.   
“Silence!” he bellows.   
The uproar barely subsides.   
“The policy of the British Magical Community regarding the Muggle war is and shall continue to be non-intervention!”   
Phoebe and Charlotte, instantly full to the point of vomiting with the roaring of the plum-gowned witches and wizards, tumble arse-over-teakettle into another memory. 

11 May 1941:   
Phoebe and Charlotte fall in behind a cohort of witches and wizards, who are themselves following Charlotte’s grandfather. Tower Bridge is on their left. They walk briskly. Pillars of smoke rise to the sky everywhere, but the greatest pall is to the west. That is the direction in which the troupe heads, with purpose. They walk for more than half an hour along Muggle roads that follow the river. Charlotte’s grandfather and the witches and wizards in his entourage are impeccably disguised as Muggles and attract no attention along the way.   
“What’s that?” Phoebe whispers, though, of course, they cannot be heard.  
“That’s the Muggle Parliament. It’s their government. Like the Ministry.”   
The roof is collapsed and the building is burning.   
“Merlin’s pants, I had no idea,” Phoebe whispers to Charlotte.   
“I heard stories, but I didn’t know, either,” Charlotte replies.   
They don’t know how the Pensieve works. They experience a sensation of the ground shifting beneath them. They see Charlotte’s grandfather and the entourage in another street. A sign on a white brick wall calls it Ebury Street.   
There is little bomb damage, but the smoke is thick in the air. The Minister for Magic stamps his feet and makes a gesture, and a small dwelling appears between the Muggle terrace houses. A young couple run down the steps with two children in tow.   
“You are all right, then,” Leonard Spencer-Moon says to them, with a tone of authority Charlotte has never heard from him.  
They are apparently all right. A healer in the Minister’s entourage does a Cheering Charm and provides them with Pepperup Potion. Another Ministry factotum produces a charcuterie board with charmed cheeses, Dragon liver pate, smoked Winged Boar ham, hard tack, and sourdough bread slices.   
The memory abruptly shifts again, and Phoebe and Charlotte feel yanked about.   
Leonard Spencer-Moon is standing in a tight, small room that has an underground feeling. He faces a fat man seated behind a small desk full of Muggle telephones and stacked high with parchment.   
“Ah, the other minister, I see,” the fat mat drawls sarcastically, in what Phoebe instantly recognises as an upper-class accent. “Changed your mind yet?”   
“On the contrary, Prime Minister,” replies Charlotte’s grandfather, “I merely came by to express my condolences.”   
“Condolences!” the fat mat bellows. “We’ve over fourteen-hundred dead and counting! Commons is bombed and burnt! Condolences mean fuck all! We need your magic! We need it now! Damn your condolences! Damn your condolences to bloody fucking hell!”   
Now it is Charlotte’s grandfather’s turn to bellow.   
“Mister Churchill! As I have previously explained, Europe is full of witches and wizards! The whole world is full of us! We have voluntarily sequestered ourselves since the seventeenth century! What do you imagine would happen were we to take sides now? Array ourselves with our respective Muggle governments, make war alongside them, against each other? Incalculable, unconscionable destruction!”  
“And how exactly would you characterise the nature of the destruction currently occurring, Mister Spencer-Moon?” Churchill says, slapping the palms of his fleshy hands on the little desk. One of the telephones begins to ring but he ignores it.   
“My condolences are heartfelt but my position is beyond my power to change and remains inalterable.”   
The telephone continues ringing imperiously.   
Churchill visibly deflates and softens.   
“Very well, Leonard, stay a moment for a drink.” Grunting and heaving himself up, he fetches a couple tumblers and a decanter, and pours. Leonard Spencer-Moon, who has been standing the whole time, seats himself in a cordovan leather wing-backed chair facing the tiny desk.  
Phoebe and Charlotte watch in gape-mouthed awe as gin is drunk, and drunk again, and again. The telephone never stops ringing.   
At last, Charlotte’s grandfather rises.   
“Best wishes, Winston. Sorry.”   
“Bugger off, you bastard.”   
Leonard Spencer-Moon throws a bit of Floo Powder into the tiny stove against the stone wall and vanishes. Phoebe and Charlotte tumble chaotically into another memory. 

January 1943   
Hither Green, Catford, South London:   
Phoebe and Charlotte trot along behind Charlotte’s grandfather, who is alone this time. He stops before a row of dingy houses. He stamps his right foot. He claps his hands to his sides. He puts his feet as far apart as his shoulders and clasps his hands behind his back. It is a perfect impersonation of a Muggle colour sergeant on the parade ground. In response, a little Tudor structure pushes aside and appears between the modern dwellings.   
Phoebe and Charlotte glean that the magical couple who run into the street are called the Leverings. They lost their two children in the bombing. Apparently the Muggles killed include more than forty children and teachers from a place called the Sandhurst Road School. Leonard Spencer-Moon offers the condolences of the Ministry of Magic to the Leverings. Phoebe and Charlotte watch him as he walks away and turns a corner. Glancing about to see that he is not observed, he sits in the rubble, puts his face in his hands, and weeps. 

25 December 1976   
Phoebe: Bloody hell.   
Charlotte: Merlin’s pants. Bloody hell is right. Let’s get out of here before the grownups wake up.   
They close the door to the study gently behind them and retrace their steps to the kitchen. Charlotte’s family are already seated round the wooden table and the elves are plating Christmas morning breakfast. Calls of, “Ah, there you are, you two!” and “Happy Christmas!” ring out. The breakfast looks delicious, but, to Phoebe and Charlotte, the sausages smell like burning flesh. 

12 August 1977   
Paddington, London:   
Charlotte Spencer-Moon, aged 12, about to start her Second Year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, has been granted parental permission to walk the streets of Muggle London from Noon till Three, whilst wearing a particularly strong Trace Charm so she can be picked up if she gets in trouble. She is not a spoilt child, she has to earn privileges such as this, with good grades and good behaviour. Her parents & grandparents take great care that Charlotte should be neither coddled nor sheltered. On the street, she keeps hearing bits of popular Muggle songs on the wirelesses of passing cars, and coming from the speakers of Muggle establishments: Whoever is singing is self-confident but also a bit yearning; it’s quite poignant. His aim is true. He is watching the detectives (something with which Charlotte can identify, having eavesdropped on closed-door cocktails-and-billiards reminiscences between retired Aurors and her grandfather). He claims not to be angry, yet he is candidly roiling in a rage. And his feelings for Alison will rend your heart. You shall wish that you yourself were Alison; or, in the alternative, Charlotte feels, you shall wish that your own Alison—whomever they may be—may hear you, and respond to you, eyes and heart wide open. Charlotte breaks into a skip on Praed Street. She may or may not have red shoes. The angels may or may not want to wear them. 

November 1977  
Madam Hooch: Look sharp, Loughran, you’ll miss lunch.   
Dominic Loughran: Madam, it’s not cheating, is it, to use just a little bit of a defensive charm? Right, I’ve been doing it, I’ve done it my whole life, but if it’s cheating, I’ll take the punishment, but my teammates never knew.   
Hooch: Show me.   
Loughran: Very well, you’ll have to bump me or shove me. No, madame, not with a Bludger, with your own ill intent.   
So Hooch throws a get-out-of-my-way-fool hex at his right shoulder, which he sees coming, and takes, and shrugs off. It dissipates just past him. No one watching would have seen anything unusual for either Quidditch or walking the corridors of school.   
Hooch: Come with me, now. No, that’s not cheating, you can wipe that panic off your gormless mug and put your game face back on.   
Moments later, staff room: Ah, there’s the pair of you. This affects you, Professor Flitwick, as Head of this student’s House, and as Charms Master. And it affects you, Professor McGonagall, as Transfiguration Mistress. It appears to me that Mister Loughran could be doing O.W.L.-level work for both of you, but, as it’s not Flying Sport, it’s not my area of expertise. If we had a functioning DADA department, I’d be telling them as well. I’ll leave you to it, then? Oh, and he’s needlessly shy, and painfully honest. Switch that. 

1978—1979 Academic Year:   
Ravenclaw Quidditch: It seems like every team, every year, is composed entirely of Third Years and Fourth Years. Nobody wants to play in their O.W.L. or N.E.W.T. years. No Second Years ever make it onto the team, because they never get past tryouts. Thus half the team turns over every year, and the whole team every two. Nevertheless, Charlotte Spencer-Moon and Phoebe Avery-Cartin decide together to set academics aside and try out for the team. It’s a shite team. Sometimes, they are beaters together. Other times, Charlotte is Keeper and Phoebe is one of the Chasers. There is no question that they are the two strongest flyers on the team, but it’s not enough to pull Ravenclaw from behind. Sometimes, Dominic Loughran is in as Keeper, sometimes as Seeker. Sometimes, he sits out. It all depends upon the whims of Team Captain. The Captain’s whims seem irrational, whimsical, contrary to the putative, fundamental nature of the House. Ravenclaw finish in third place, barely ahead of Hufflepuff. 

Hallowe’en 1978   
Ravenclaw Common Room:   
Ravenclaw Common Room: Those starting Muggle Studies this year are poring over The Philosophy of the Mundane: Why the Muggles Prefer Not to Know, by Mordicus Egg. 

Christmas 1978   
Dominic Loughran is home for Christmas.   
It’s the best sensation in the history of sensation. He can stride where the alleyway is wide and straight and empty, and sidle where steps are narrow or a wall-facing mumbler is blocking the way. These are his steps since childhood, and he knows every single one of the mad, glorious toenail-tray-bearers, the wish-they-were-sinister sulkers, skulkers, and glowerers, the freaks of the world who do not deign or dare to people the bland lives of his schoolmates. He ducks under a low arch. Home for Christmas. Nowhere does Christmas like Knockturn Alley.


End file.
